3D Printing Industry review of the year December 2017

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The final month of 2017 saw a number of federal, national and supra-national authorities publish strategy and legal guidance on 3D printing. Together with news of novel engineering applications in 3D printing, our most popular stories were once again about medical applications.

3D Printing industry also took the opportunity presented by this quieter time in the year to ask those at the forefront of additive manufacturing for their insights into the year just gone and the future.

The resulting report found no cause of reasonable concern for 3D printing and copyright infringement and called for a further clarification of the boundaries where online 3D filesharing platforms and defective or counterfeit 3D prints are concerned. The report also made a number of recommendations towards resolving the issues raised.

The People’s Republic of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) issued its own Action Plan for 3D printing as part of the country’s Made in China 2025 strategic roadmap. The Action Plan report identified an additive manufacturing industry forecast to exceed 20 billion Renminbi (US$3 billion) by 2020 and outlined four general ambitions, five development goals, four tasks to achieve these goals, and six safeguards to implement the tasks.

December saw a number of breakthroughs in 3D scanning applications. oVert announced that it would be CT scanning between 20,000 and 30,000 fluid-preserved vertebrate specimens from institutions across the US, funded by a US National Science Foundation (NSF) grant. These would all be freely downloadable.